The Richard Burton Diaries

[John F]

It struck me as very strange that this is published by a major university press, but reading the review, I can see why Yale UP didn't think this was beneath them.


October 25, 2012
For the Love of Lit and Liz
By DWIGHT GARNER

THE RICHARD BURTON DIARIES
Edited by Chris Williams
Illustrated. 693 pages. Yale University Press. $35.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the years he most assiduously kept a diary, the actor Richard Burton (1925-84) had the following pet names for his wife, Elizabeth Taylor: Lumpy, Booby, Old Fatty, Shumdit, Cantank, Old Snapshot and the Baby. She sometimes called him, who knows why, Darling Nose and Drife.

They were at the height of their fame, and they seemed to speak a private language. Together they called Campari mixed with vodka and soda water, one of their favorite cocktails, a “Goop.” They referred to the act of raiding the refrigerator instead of sitting down to a proper meal as “grapple-snapping.” That’s a vivid and useful phrase I hope becomes, alongside noshing, common usage.

Burton’s diaries, published now for the first time, are filled with these kinds of pocket-size delights. I grapple-snapped my way through them and even fixed a Goop or two. (They are delicious and derailing.) But I admired this complicated and fairly remarkable book for its deeper and more insinuating qualities as well. First among them is that Richard Burton, a maniacal reader his entire life, was handy with the English language.

He was unpretentious and aphoristic. You can open his diaries almost at random and find lines like: “I shall die of drink and makeup”; “It was a piece of glottal cake”; “We are cosmic jokes”; “I was gonged down by a highway patrolman for exceeding the speed limit”; “There are few pleasures to match tipsiness in this murderous world.”

Many actors have complained about gawking vacationers and cunning paparazzi. Only Burton put it this way: “If the ‘Origin of Species’ is valid then we are certain to see within the next few hundred years American tourists with built-in cameras.”It’s hard to imagine a midcareer actor working today whose diaries will be half as literate or lemony.

So many lurid and appalling books have been written about Burton and Taylor that it’s hard to see them plain. “The Richard Burton Diaries” is, however, true to why tabloid writers flocked to them: It’s a love story so robust you can nearly warm your hands on its flames.

Taylor is in her late 30s in most of these entries; he is in his mid-40s. “E is my only ism,” Burton writes. “Elizabethism.” While she was away, he noted, “I miss her like food.” He calls Taylor “an eternal one-night stand” and “beautiful beyond the dreams of pornography.” He declares, “She is a prospectus that can never be entirely cataloged, an almanac for Poor Richard.”

This volume’s editor, Chris Williams, reminds us that Taylor often read Burton’s diaries, with his permission. (She even wrote in them on occasion.) So misdirection and self-editing is surely omnipresent. But Burton didn’t shy from critiquing Taylor’s looks. She is “still a little tubby,” he writes in 1969. He notices her “ever -present baby double chin.” He types: “The breasts, despite their largeness and considerable weight, sag very slightly but no more than they did 10 years ago. Her bottom is firm and round. She needs weight off her stomach.”

He is honest about their quarrels, which could be racking. At times it’s as if they’re delivering outtakes from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (Mike Nichols’s 1966 film version, in which they starred). “We drank Sambuca and said nasty things to each other” is a not-untypical line here. So is: “If you can marry Eddie Fisher you can marry anybody, I said.”

Taylor gave as well as got. “I was coldly accused of virtually every sin under the sun,” Burton writes after one row. “Drunkenness (true) mendacity (true) being boring (true) infidelity (untrue) killing myself fairly quickly (true) pride envy avarice (all true) being ugly (true) having once been handsome (untrue).” Both seemed to agree that, as Burton put it, “A good shouting match is sometimes good for the soul.”

Come to this volume for the love story, stay for the lit talk. Burton often read as many as three books a day and hated anything or anyone getting in his way. “Maria Callas arrived,” he jots in November 1968, “and since I was in a reading mood she was not welcome.”

Burton read everything, high and low, and his running commentary is mostly a joy to behold. Edmund Wilson is “wrong about everything” and “a bore.” A Kingsley Amis novel is “expertly written but has ‘don’ written all over it.” He notes the “excruciating banality” of Ian Fleming and writes about him, hilariously: “He has the cordon-bleu nerve to attack one of my favorite discoveries: American short-order cooking.”

Burton was a frustrated writer; he searched for a book of his own to write, something to follow up the small semi-autobiographical novel, “A Christmas Story,” he published in 1964. He was tired of merely repeating other men’s words for a living.

“I am as thrilled by the English language as I am by a lovely woman or dreams,” he writes, “green as dreams and deep as death.” That last clause is a reference — these diaries are wrinkled with such allusions — to a poem by Rupert Brooke.

Burton and Taylor knew almost everyone, and this book can be consumed as a series of mildly snarky comments about the rich and famous. Mia Farrow has “eyes as round as her fist.” Franco Zeffirelli is “a coward and devious.” John Huston is “a simpleton.” Paul Scofield “walks like a pimp.” Lucille Ball is “a monster of staggering charmlessness.”

There are dispatches from the sets of “Anne of the Thousand Days” (1969) and “Raid on Rommel” (1971), but as the book goes along, Burton and Taylor begin to see less of actors and more of the world demimonde. There are a lot of barons and embassy parties. Yachts and private jets and rubies are purchased. Caviar blinis are consumed. Weeks are spent in St-Tropez and Cannes and Gstaad. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Princess Grace make regular appearances. One half-expects a callow young Donald Trump to butt in and hold a news conference.

“I think that I am, despite my ferocious attachment to the working class, an admirer of the true aristocrat,” Burton writes, “particularly if he is cleverer than I am.” Few of the aristos in his diaries, frankly, seem clever at all. You suspect that he’d have had a happier life had he spent more time with writers, the people he most liked to argue with.

These diaries are not unedited. They have been pared down by about one-fourth, Mr. Williams tells us. They are still too long. Burton was most prolific from 1965 to 1972, but there are also short and halfhearted entries here from 1939, 1940, 1960 and the early ’80s. If you skip these, you’ll miss little.

Burton and Taylor married twice, in 1964 and 1975. They were divorced twice as well, in 1974 and 1976. They went through hell. But you believe the Burton who writes: “I love that woman so much sometimes that I cannot believe my luck.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/books ... liams.html

[jbuck919]

Recently I saw portions of Burton's acclaimed Broadway Hamlet, i.e., a video of the actual Broadway performance which is on YouTube, and was less than bowled over. (Now John is going to tell us that he saw this live--he is of the right age, location, and extent of culture.) Not to demean Burton too much, for he was a fine actor, but I was sometimes more impressed with televised interviews, which matched the apparent level of these diaries.

What I had not realized before was that the Hamlet was in modern costume. Apparently Burton disliked historical costume, though he agreed to it in one of my favorite films, Becket, also available on YouTube, which I first saw reel-to-reel when the young priest at my hometown parish presented it as part of some festivities. The parish, you see, was called St. Thomas of Canterbury.

[John F]

Right age - yes. Right location - it didn't turn out that way. From April 9 through August 8 of 1964, the run of the show, I was otherwise engaged, first at Fort Monmouth for advanced individual training and then at Camp Henry in Korea, courtesy of Uncle Sugar. Otherwise I'd certainly have tried to see "Hamlet."

As for the film, I did see that long ago but don't remember much about it. I've meant to see it again but haven't gotten around to it. Richard Burton said, possibly in his diaries (I've read other reviews of them), that he was bored repeating the same role day after day, week after week, month after month, and possibly that shows. For that matter, I've seen quite a few productions of "Hamlet" myself and no longer jump at the chance to see it again. It takes a special actor, director, or both to get me in motion.

Burton was a very special actor in the theatre. I did see him as the psychiatrist in "Equus" when he played the part on Broadway and it was breathtaking. He had one of the great voices of all the actors I've seen, possibly the greatest, and spoke his part with a variety and subtlety of nuance that you only get (or hope for) in the theatre, not on the screen. When the movie came out a year or two later, naturally I went to see it, and was disappointed. The charisma that had gripped me in the theatre wasn't there, and neither was the subtlety. Maybe that's part of the difference between stage and screen, where the director more than the actors creates the "performance"; maybe Burton had gotten bored with the part, who knows? But there it is.

[lennygoran]

I did see him as the psychiatrist in "Equus" when he played the part on Broadway and it was breathtaking.

Sue and I saw that one--agree completely with you! Regards, Len

[Tarantella]

It's been fascinating reading this thread about Richard Burton's diaries. I've always wondered about the relationship between Taylor and Burton and felt that it was two narcissistic individuals joined at the hip. Perhaps this is a rather glib reading of the two of them - together. I guess I'm suspicious of, but also fascinated by, turbulent relationships and wonder why people persist under these conditions. Having had a couple of attachments myself which were quite tumultuous I'm eager to read about others in similar circumstances as I could never explain my own experiences. For me, loving somebody but being a combatant doesn't seem 'compatible' except, possibly, in "The Taming of the Shrew". George and Martha in "Virginia Woolf" - now that was truly awful and I felt there was visceral hatred between man and wife. But I guess love and hate are both sides of the same coin - or are they?! And the thought of Richard Burton as a writer and prolific reader is fascinating to me.

Richard Burton had a fine voice but, to be honest, I felt he was just ridiculous in a lot of his film roles. I think of "Alexander the Great" and him in that silly tunic with a booming Shakespearean voice and I looked for somewhere to hide, I felt so embarrassed for him. He was an outsized ego often in undersized film roles. The films of the 60's, such as the execrable "Sandpiper" and "The VIPs" - shocking kitsch. And "Cleopatra" - the two redeeming elements of that film were the music of Alex North and the great words of Joseph L. Mankewicz, particularly as delivered by Rex Harrison. (Sorry, I've spelled Joseph's surname wrongly). Poetic words in an otherwise ho-hum film. Taylor was dreadful in it too. She always sounded shrewish when trying to act ultra-seriously. (Think "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"!) Oh, but I think she was wonderful in "Giant"......'darling; I'm sorry about my cave-man speech'.

[jbuck919]

And "Cleopatra" - the two redeeming elements of that film were the music of Alex North and the great words of Joseph L. Mankewicz, particularly as delivered by Rex Harrison. (Sorry, I've spelled Joseph's surname wrongly). Poetic words in an otherwise ho-hum film. Taylor was dreadful in it too.

All I can say is that I love that film from beginning to end. If I have objections about the performances, it is a wooden Hume Cronyn as Sosigenes (I mean no wonder Roddy MacDowell throws a spear at him) and the little non-English-speaking boy who played Caesarion delivering his lines phonetically, badly (must have been the producer's grandson or something).

I think it true that Burton, who AFAIK only ever acted with his real voice and accent, does sound ridiculous on occasion, but the other side of that is that he was occasionally required to deliver bad lines (The Robe ["Were you out there?"], and yes, alas, Beckett ["I'm beginning to think he's not a sad God after all."], and couldn't or didn't offer any attempt to make them convincing.

[Tarantella]

Bad writing. Undoubtedly this, set against Burton's somewhat pompous, theatrical delivery, was the incongruent element in a lot of his films. "The Robe" - a truly dreadful film, IMO. I love beautiful male speaking voices as much as I do music (and, unfortunately, often their 'owners'!!), but in these modern times that cultivated British voice has proven unkind to posterity. Today we have the most fabulous actors (and I concentrate here on the males) for whom that RADA delivery is no longer a prerequisite for either success or authority. I'm thinking here of the phenomenal Daniel Day-Lewis - phenomenal I say - and his American equals Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix: these three, IMO, are the world's greatest film actors. Bar none. And for them the voice is but one of the tools of their trade. For Burton, on the other hand, it was everything. Then there are actors who have the voice, style, charisma and acting skill with a vengeance - I think of Peter O'Toole. Unfortunately, these days when I listen to an actor like Rex Harrison he merely conveys shrillness to me. None of his roles was ever convincing IMO. I felt that Professor Higgins was Harrison himself! Last week I was watching Hitchcock's "Stage Fright" again and Michael Wilding's performance was wooden and undermined by his aristocratic accent - he was, after all, playing a Police Inspector!!!

I'm glad you enjoy "Cleopatra" as it does have a fine script, but is hopelessly miscast and way, way too long.